Soplado de película

The (displaced) Bhil adivasi had for many generations lived in a seemingly inhospitable environment in the hills o f the Narmada Valley by carving out an existence which made use o f a wide resource base that included the hills, forest and river. ^ In this environment subsistence agriculture formed the mainstay o f their existence. Subsistence agriculture is defined as ‘farming and associated activities which together form a livelihood strategy, where the main output is consumed directly by the household, where there are few if any purchased inputs and where only a minor proportion o f the output is marketed’ (HEARD, 2000:1). Like most people who carry out subsistence agriculture, however, the Bhil adivasi

were not entirely self-provisioning. It is therefore appropriate to describe the range o f rural livelihood strategies adopted.

The Bhil adivasi were first and foremost cultivators - an adaptation from the way o f their predecessors who were hunter-gatherers and later, as noted by Baviskar (1997), slash and bum shifting cultivators - yet only a relatively small proportion o f the land that they cultivated actually belonged to them.^ M aking use o f a variety o f land tenure arrangements was thus a vital component in their livelihood strategies.

Most households cultivated some katidar land - legal land holdings (dating back to British, and in some cases Mughal, land settlement schemes) on part o f which they normally built their house. These legal holdings on which land revenue was paid (indicated by ownership o f a red book with the appropriate documentation) were, however, smaller than the areas o f forestland cultivated illegally by almost every household. The cultivation o f (extra) forestland was a necessary component

o f their livelihood strategies given low productivity levels resulting from thin, stony topsoils and a lack o f irrigation. Despite legal restrictions the oustees had for generations cleared and cultivated forestland by providing 'cha-pani' (bribe money)^ to the forest officer in charge o f the respective area. Although not without its problems, this was a system that worked for both the oustees and the officer, who made extra income without fear o f reprimand from higher government officials from the Forest Department. The oustees cultivated the extra land needed to support themselves.

A third type o f land previously cultivated by oustees o f Vadaj-1 and -2 and Hafeshwar-Devdi was Dormaapni or Karaba land. This is government wasteland - land previously forested that had been cleared for one reason or another. Although the land did not belong to the oustees, paying a sum o f money (for which a receipt was provided) gave them the right to cultivate this land. In effect the government leased this land to them, and in one instance oustees from Vadaj managed to acquire some o f this government wasteland.^

The availability o f different combinations o f kathidar, dormaapni/karaba and forest land (called jungle land by the Bhils) for oustees to cultivate meant no one went landless in the hill villages, although some households may have been so in legal terms. In the absence o f a developed market economy - due to limited access to markets - oustees cultivated only what they needed to support themselves, not more and never less. The official figures for types o f land to be submerged in the original villages o f relevance to this study are shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Land to be submerged by type as o f 1981 (hectares)

Village Cultivable private land (katidar)

Cultivable wasteland

Forest land Total

Makadkhada 113.1 55.1 305.8 474.0

Dhumna 6.5 - 47.5 54.0

Charbara 6.5 - 55.0 61.5

Hafeshwar 68.8 3673.0 660.4 4402.1

Panderia 7.5 - 16.9 24.4

Source: Das and Charan (1983).

Rural livelihood strategies are obviously about more than ensuring the availability o f land - what one does with the land is equally important. Bhil adivasi relied on rain-fed agriculture: even simple forms o f irrigation such as rainwater harvesting and lift irrigation were absent in this region. To counteract the resulting vulnerability to the vagaries o f nature, the Bhils grew a variety o f crops as a risk- reducing strategy (Hakim, 1997). These included coarse grains - maize [Zea mays], deshi jo w a r [Sorghum bicolor], small grains - Bhadi [Setaria italica Beauv] or fox-tail millet, bunti [Echinochloa crus], kodri [Paspalum scrobiculatum], pulses - tuwar [Cajhanus cajan], urad [Phaseolus mungo] and other crops such as red bhindi [Hibiscus Sabdarifa], moor, bajra [Pennisetum typhoidium], moong, m ungphali, masoor, tali, chillies and valpapri.

Maize and jow ar were the staple diet. The grains were ground, made into a dough and cooked to form pancake-shaped rotlas eaten with pulses or a vegetable dish. Virtually everything grown was used for home consumption. No cash crops such as cotton were cultivated, although excess tuwar was sometimes sold for money. Villagers would carry a basket o f tuwar on their head and walk over the hills to their nearest market (up to 25 km away). The seeds o f red bhindi were exchanged for salt at the market.

Fruits from trees on oustees’ land, and fruit and vegetables from the jungle supplemented their diets.^ Oustees named many types o f fruits that they ate from the jungle, the most popular being charoli. Vegetable dishes such as segvi bhaji

and mukhi bhaji were made from the leaves o f trees found in the jungle. Another popular vegetable item collected from the jungle was khandiya. In poor crop years oustees would resort to eating a poisonous root vegetable dug up from forest, which had to be placed in river water for 24 hours for the poison to be removed before it could be cooked and consumed. Access to the river allowed for the consumption o f fresh fish in certain seasons. Thus the forest and the river acted as insurance in seasons o f crop failure. Moreover, for pleasure oustees made and drank alcohol either from mahuda fruit trees or by collecting the juice o f tad

trees and allowing it to ferment in the sun. Alcohol, the consumption o f which is prohibited in Gujarat, was also used in religious ceremonies.

Whilst meat was not consumed on a daily basis, oustees did sometimes cook poultry reared in their home and on special occasions goat meat was consumed, again from animals reared at home. Cattle, which grazed freely in the hills and forest, provided a limited supply o f milk. Rearing animals was however less to do with fulfilling dietary desires than with providing a form o f capital. Although households were generally self-pro visioning, clothes and jewellery were purchased from the market and these purchases were mostly funded through the annual sale o f male goats. With the exception o f oxen (rarely sold as they were used in the fields for ploughing) cattle were also sold, particularly in preparing for a marriage when the groom ’s household had to raise a bride price. Thus the rearing o f animals formed a crucial component o f oustees’ livelihood strategies and the hills provided ample grazing grounds.

With the capacity to only grow one (monsoon) crop per year the agricultural season in the hills lasted no longer than 4 months. The rest o f the year oustees were able to enjoy themselves, although most households used some o f their free time to engage in other forms o f income generation, which brought in modest sums o f money.^ Beedi leaves in which tobacco is rolled were collected and marketed via the Gujarat State Forest Development Corporation Ltd (Centre for Social Studies, 1997). Gum was also collected from forest trees. Some oustees were paid by forest officers to tender young saplings in nurseries, and a few households in Panderia made money from taking people across the river in their hand-made boats. All these activities were carried out in the vicinity o f their home in the valley hills. Only in Devdi did some household members migrate annually to the plains to work for wages, but they stress that this was only for something to do during the long idle months: they did not need to migrate to sustain their household.

Table 5.2 Regular sources o f income before rese1ttlement

Source o f income % o f households with income from this source

Collection and sale o f forest goods e.g. gum 95

Selling animals 88

- Poultry 51

- Goats 80

- Cattle 32

Labouring (excluding agricultural) 36

Agricultural labouring only 19

Self employment e.g. boating 12

Service employment e.g. nursery carer 7

Loaning assets e.g. oxen 12

Total N = 42

Source: Economie survey

Note: Number o f missing answers varies

In short subsistence needs were met drawing on a wide sphere that included agricultural land, forest, grazing pastures in the hills and the river. This is in complete contrast to oustees’ lives in the plains.